As it warned that it would earlier this year (CI No 1,455), Psion Plc has reported a sharp fall in profits for the six months to June 31. With turnover up 8% to UKP15.4m, pre-tax profits have slumped to UKP314,000 from UKP1.6m for the same period last year, and profit after tax is down to UKP193,000. Psion has no hesitation in attributing blame for its poor performance on Dacom Systems, where turnover fell by 44% and a substantial loss was incurred. The company’s senior management was sacked in March, and a major restructuring involved 25 redundancies. Elsewhere, sales of computer products, peripherals and applications have risen by 30%, but the overheads and costs required to support the company’s new range of Mobile Computers also had an impact on profitability. Psion expects that the addition of software and peripherals for the Mobile Computers will produce a significant advance in sales during the second half. The market is very unforgiving of high-flyers that get wounded and the share price looks a lot more bombed out than the operating performance: from a 1990 high of 285p it hit a new low of 69 pence, off a penny, yesterday.
